Turkey in Europe: According to New Observations by the Gentlemen at the Royal Science Academy

Description

Pieter van der Aa (1659−1733) was a Dutch publisher and bookseller, based in Leiden, who specialized in reissuing maps acquired from earlier mapmakers. Van der Aa’s major work was the elaborate Galerie Agréable du Monde (The pleasurable gallery of the world), a compendium of some 3,000 maps in 66 parts, bound in 27 volumes, and completed in 1729. Presented here is van der Aa’s map of the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire, which in the early 18th century included present-day Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Greece, Romania, Serbia, and the European part of Turkey. Two distance scales are provided: French leagues and German leagues. The illustration surrounding the cartouche in the lower left-hand corner shows an Ottoman soldier and an Ottoman official, and what appears to be a view of two Turkish merchants conversing with a European associate. In the background is the harbor and city of Constantinople, identifiable by its hills and minarets.